Elevator Pitch: The players are advisors to the ruling noble.


Prospectus: They offer advice, solve problems directly or through their own agents and intermediaries, scheme their schemes, dream their dreams, hit me (HIT ME) hit me with their laser beams, and take on whatever responsibilities the ruler feels like delegating to them. Access to the ruler gives them great indirect power, but also makes them the targets for various coups, propaganda campaigns, influence attempts, etc.

Options:
- The ruler is a despot, and their job is to minimize the damage. Maybe revolt.
- The ruler is incompetent, and their damage is to work around them. Maybe revolt.
- They exist in a complex feudal web where they also have to content with their ruler's liege, rivals, etc.
- They are vassals with their own holdings and responsibilities in addition to handling whatever the ruler wants.
- Setting might be historical, fantasy, post-apocalyptic, neo-corporate cyberpunk, or space opera

Set Up Options:
- The players were born to the politics of their position as career courtiers
- The players were adventurers who overthrew the old evil empire (boo hiss) and helped establish a new one and now have to pivot from fighting dragons to king wrangling

Systems: GURPS, Fate (core or accelerated), guided freeform. Something combat-focused like DnD would probably be a waste.

I'd love to play in this as well

This sounds like fun, I would up for playing this.

so I have an idea...but it is dependant on something else...

I want you (and those interested in your concept)...to be the "council of 12" in my mature game.

you would serve as quest givers for the party of adventurers. not a full-time job by any means.

what is the council of 12?
the council of 12 is the rulers of the world.
they are a loose alliance of powerful individuals...some are allied out of mutual benefit... while others do so out of mutually assured destruction.

because every member of the "council of 12" is trying to vie for more power.
Each of you would be able to have "secret agents' who report directly to certain members (or as double agents) who have secret powers.

how will this work?
each of the council members would have private threads to give missions to the players.

council players can only see the main thread and their own thread.

while ONLY the non-council players can see all threads.

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a game in three levels
council level
council secret agent level
the party level

each has things the others don't.

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let the cold-civil-war begin.

actual council members will gain a choice of a few special (higher level) templates. while agents and non-council members are allowed to be more varied.

if you are interested RTJ here with the subject line "council", "council with an agent" or "non-council"

link to another game

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BUT all of this is dependant on a group of characters run by players who don't have proof about the secret war between the "council of 12"

Would any of you guys be interested in a playtest for a set of rules to cover this type of material?

I’ve wanted to run this type of game for a while, but was struggling to find a set of rules that would cover it without being over-complex or pathetically simplified. Most kingmaker rules get bogged down in bean-counting, and running a domain becomes such a chore that players (and GMs) quickly drop out. Either that, or they’re so simple that you get no immersion in your fief and it feels more like a board game.

I’ve recently found a free rule set that might have the Goldilocks Formula, now that I’ve very heavily tweaked it, and I was going to do an alpha test to thrash out the fundamentals with a mate I’ve worked with before, but he’s tied up at present.

Really, a group of players should trial the beta version, because an alpha playtest tends to be very stop-start as rules are changed and concepts are scrapped and taken back to the drawing board, but if you’re willing to have a go at the alpha, it could turn into something nice in the longer term.

If you’d rather play a finished product, look me up in a year or so...

My game would work on two levels - a strategic level of Diplomacy-style map-painting, and a personal level of intrigue, courtship, and single combat.

The basic setting premise for the playtest would be that groups of colonists are exploring a new land. They will set up domains, possibly fight the current occupants, and will sooner or later meet one another. Eventually, one of them may become High-King by one means or another.

Whether the Alpha Test will get that far, remains to be seen.

Magic, monsters, etc, are barely covered in the basic rules, so this would be a low/no fantasy game. You might take a group of men/women on a quest to find a mythical beast, or run across such things on your estate, but the rules I want to test out are primarily political/martial, and magic is a complexity I don’t need at this stage in the development.

If it’s too nuts and bolts for you, I’ll just wait for my mate to get some free time. :)

I'd be down.

Down for it

Thanks for the interest folks. Now that this ad is up for bumping, we may get some more takers.

I've set up a game here:
link to another game

Take a look and drop me a RTJ. :)

It's a bit much, mechanically, for my tastes.